40 Facts about Queen Bees

by Korhan Kaftanoglu May 14, 2023

Honey bee queen surrounded by worker bees on a comb

Updated October 2026. The queen is the heart of every honey bee colony. Here are 40 facts about how queens develop, mate, lay eggs and are replaced, whether you're a new beekeeper or rearing your own queens.

Queens and workers are female; drones are male.
A queen develops in 16 days from egg to emergence, a worker in 21 days and a drone in 24 days.
Queens and workers aren't genetically different. Any fertilized egg can become a queen, depending on how the larva is fed.
Queens are fed royal jelly their whole lives, including as larvae. Worker larvae get royal jelly only for their first 2-3 days, then a diet with honey and pollen.
Queens can live 3-4 years. Workers live about 6 weeks in summer, and winter bees live several months.
Queens are most productive in their first year or two, so colonies should be requeened every year or two.
The first virgin queen to emerge kills rival queens and stings the developing queens in their cells. When a colony swarms, the old queen usually leaves with the swarm before the new queens emerge.
Queens spend their whole lives in the hive and never leave after mating, except to swarm. Virgin queens take their mating flights when they're 7-10 days old.
Queens usually mate within 1-3 miles of the hive, at drone congregation areas.
A mating flight takes 20 to 30 minutes.
Queens never mate inside the hive or in any enclosure.
Queens take mating flights in the afternoon, on sunny, calm days, not in the morning.
Queens release sex pheromones to attract drones during mating flights.
A queen mates with 15-20 drones in the air.
If a queen hasn't mated with enough drones, she can take another mating flight the next day.
Queens store the sperm in a sperm storage organ, the spermatheca, for the rest of their lives.
Queens come back from mating with a "mating sign," part of the last drone's reproductive organs.
Worker bees remove the mating sign, and the queen starts laying eggs 3-4 days after mating.
If a queen enters the wrong hive after a mating flight, she will be killed.
A young, productive queen can lay 1,500-2,000 eggs a day in spring and summer.
The eggs a queen lays in one day weigh about as much as she does.
Virgin queens are smaller, weighing 160-200 mg. Once laying, queens develop their ovaries and get bigger and heavier.
A queen has 2 ovaries with around 160 ovarioles (egg tubes) in each, where the eggs develop.
Queens measure each cell with their front legs and lay fertilized eggs in worker cells and unfertilized eggs in drone cells.
Queens control the release of sperm from the spermatheca by opening and closing the spermathecal valve.
A colony's performance, honey yield, defensiveness, swarming tendency and overwintering ability depend on the queen's genetics, her age, and the genetics of the drones she mated with.
The age of the larva matters for queen quality: the younger, the better. Queens grafted from 1-day-old larvae are heavier, with more ovarioles, a larger spermatheca and more stored sperm, than queens from 2- or 3-day-old larvae.
The larger the queen cell, the better the queen usually is.
As queens age, they release less queen pheromone and lay fewer eggs, and they lay more drone eggs.
When a queen gets old, the colony raises a few new queens and the old queen is superseded.
The old queen and a supersedure queen can live together and both lay eggs for a while before the old queen is killed.
If a European queen mates with Africanized drones, the colony becomes Africanized and the queen should be replaced.
If a beekeeper introduces a new queen into a colony that already has a queen, the new queen will be killed.
Queens have stingers, but a queen's stinger has fewer and smaller barbs than a worker's.
Queens rarely sting people. They use their stingers on rival queens.
Queens have notched mandibles and are fed by worker bees.
Queens don't have pollen baskets (corbiculae), so they can't collect pollen.
Queens don't release alarm pheromones.
Queens don't have the food glands workers use to make royal jelly.
Queens have smaller eyes than workers or drones: about 4,900 facets (ommatidia) per eye, compared with about 6,900 for workers and 8,000 for drones.

Bonus: use the 7 frame NUC hive as a timing box for grafting

The Apimaye 7 frame NUC hive has 3 slots for the division board: one in the center to split it into two 3-frame boxes, and two more to isolate the first or seventh frame.
Set the division board to queen excluder mode by turning the dials to the larger grid.
Put the division board in one of the outer slots to isolate the first or seventh frame.
Put a fully drawn dark comb in the isolated space with the queen. Eggs are easier to see on dark comb.
The queen can't get to the other side, but worker bees can pass through the division board and care for her.
The queen will lay eggs on the isolated comb.
Come back 4 days later and graft from the isolated frame. Replace it with another fully drawn comb for your next round of grafting.

For professional queen breeders

Write the date you isolate each frame on its top bar with a marker.
A day or two later, move that frame to the other side of the division board, as the second, third or fourth frame from the board.
Put another fully drawn empty comb in the isolated space, write the new date on it, and put the queen on it.
Graft from each frame 4 days after the isolation date written on it.
Keep the colony strong, with plenty of nurse bees on the isolated frame.
Repeat the cycle.